Insurers stumble into latest Obamacare glitch

People who can’t or don’t want to sign up for Obamacare through the troubled federal website have the option of enrolling directly with an insurance company — but there’s a glitch. The insurers haven’t yet been able to make a key connection with the IT infrastructure for federal exchanges.

And without that connection, they can’t help millions of people who may be eligible for federal subsidies to purchase insurance.

“Rest assured we are working closely with the government to be able to connect you to the Federally Facilitated Marketplace as soon as possible,” the notice reads. “Check back frequently for access; we continue to make progress every day.”

Aetna spokesman Matt Wiggin said that the only way to shop for insurance with subsidies is through Healthcare.gov right now.

“For individuals who come to our site to shop and are interested in subsidies, we direct them to the federal exchange,” Wiggin said.

Even before HealthCare.gov’s balky rollout, HHS gave insurers the so-called “direct enrollment” option, which lets customers largely avoid the federal website and sign up for coverage through an insurers’ website.

The insurers’ systems are supposed to be able to ping the federal data hub, the massive portal linking together federal agencies to determine whether a person qualifies for financial assistance and how much.

Many of the insurers don’t want to talk publicly about the problems, as they are still trying to work through them with federal health officials.

“The direct enrollment through the carrier could be quite popular with consumers because it would be a way to bypass the cumbersome federal marketplace,” Laszewski said. Consumer advocates, however, said they don’t have a firm grasp on how popular the direct enrollment option will turn out to be. They say it creates barriers to comparison shopping.

HHS said it hoped to have the back door opened by the end of next week.

“We are working with the issuers and our contractors to test this functionality to ensure that it works for all issuers and intend to have it available by the end of this coming week,” HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in an email to POLITICO.

Insurers continue to face a raft of issues with the federal exchange, and direct enrollment could solve – or at least short circuit – some of them. For the relatively small number of people who have made it through the HealthCare.gov enrollment process online, the “834” files that transfer their information from the federal government to insurers continue be unreliable, containing incomplete or extraneous information. Laszewski said that some of his clients also are receiving multiple files for an individual applicant — four enrollments and three cancellations, for instance.

“It makes it almost impossible to process the enrollments,” he said.

Getting a handle on exactly how extensive the enrollment problems are is difficult. The Obama administration has mostly remained silent in the past week on efforts to rebuild or repair HealthCare.gov, while President Barack Obama’s top spokesman tried to deflect attention away from the balky website.

“It’s important to remember the website alone is not the Affordable Care Act,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday.

Some enrollments do appear to be going through. A spokeswoman for Health Care Service Corp., which runs Blue Cross plans in four states, said the company has had successful enrollments on the federal exchange and through its own website. She wasn’t able to provide an estimate of how many customers the company expects from either channel.

Those who pushed for the health care law are skeptical of the direct enrollment option for one obvious reason: It doesn’t provide menu of health plans that the exchange websites promise, so the consumer can’t comparison shop, at least not on one easy to access website. Though shoppers could determine subsidy eligibility on an insurer’s website, they’ll only get to look at that company’s health plans — not those of any rival insurer.

“Isn’t that the whole idea, that people are supposed to be able to compare plans?” said health care attorney Jay Angoff, a former director of the HHS office overseeing exchanges.

After insurers pushed for the option, HHS guidance released in the spring made clear the direct enrollment feature was allowed. Insurers are required, though, to inform customers about the availability of other options.

The 15 states running their own exchanges, including the District of Columbia, can require insurance agents and brokers to show all available exchange plans, as well as disclose their financial relationships with insurers.